Sequence

DNA and proteins are arguably the most important components of the cells of living creatures. Both are produced by stringing together long chains of individual molecules - amino acids in the case of proteins and nucleotides in DNA. Understanding the identity of the individual molecules in these chains and the sequence in which they are strung together proved to be one of the major biological challenges of the last century. Only by unlocking these sequences would scientists be able not only to understand the fundamental workings of biochemistry, but also to duplicate it. In the early 1950s, British biochemist Frederick Sanger of Cambridge University developed the first viable technique for determining the amino acid sequence of proteins and used it to describe the structure of insulin, which is composed of 51 amino acids.

Before filming a massive battle on a freeway overpass in Cleveland, directors of Marvel Entertainment's recent release "Captain America: The Winter Soldier" didn't leave anything to chance. So Anthony and Joe Russo staged a kind of digital dress rehearsal for the scene, planning the entire action sequence - including the position of stunt performers, the placement of explosive squibs and the types of camera lenses that would be used - on a computer screen. They did so with the help of Proof Inc., a Los Angeles company that specializes in a process known as previsualization.

Creating a dramatic and believable depiction of people's lives in the running time of a motion picture is a challenge for most screenwriters and directors, but in "Up," Pete Docter and his creative team at Pixar had just a scant few minutes to give the back story of his protagonist, curmudgeonly senior citizen Carl Frederickson (voiced by Ed Asner), which would in turn give him an iron-clad reason to fly his entire house to South America via balloon. What's remarkable about the sequence is not only the scope of the time covered, which takes Carl and his beloved, Ellie, from childhood to old age, but also the complex emotional issues that it addresses, as well as the fact that it unfolds largely in total silence save for Michael Giacchino's Oscar-nominated score.

The skeleton of the medieval monarch King Richard III will bear just one final indignity before it is laid, once again, to rest. Researchers at the University of Leicester in England plan to sequence the deceased ruler's entire genome by collecting some of his bone material, grinding it into a powder, and then extracting the DNA. But time is running out. "He will be re-interred soon, so the ability to do this just exists for a short amount...

We asked animation director Ben Hibon to discuss the animated sequence in "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1," which picked up two Oscar nominations, one for art direction and one for visual effects. Here's what he had to say: "This is the first animated sequence ever to appear in a Harry Potter film, so it had to be distinctive and special. It's not animation as we might think of it today; it is a moving illustration of the story being read aloud by Hermione ? the story of the Deathly Hallows.

Three weeks from tonight, an amiable, whip-smart engineer named Ray Baker will be staring into his computer screen at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, hopeful and helpless - or, as he puts it, "sweating blood. " The night will have been 10 years and $2.5 billion in the making, incorporating the work of 5,000 people in 37 states. And then, 154 million miles from home, the fate of the most ambitious machine humans have sent to another planet will rest on a seven-minute landing sequence so far-fetched it looks like something Wile E. Coyote devised to catch the Road Runner.

R.E. Bonson (letter, Jan. 9) is of course correct in pointing out that, absent a zero year, 2000 and not 1999 should be the last year of the 20th century--providing the sequence begins with 1. However, when Dionysius Exiguus (also called Denis the Little by Anglophones) first proposed the anno Domini system of numbering years, he calculated that Christ was born in 1 B.C. and suggested that years thereafter be numbered consecutively. By this odd system, the first year in the sequence is minus 1, the second is 1, and the 2,000th is 1999.

A caption in your Oct. 7 story on Walt Disney's "Fantasia" says Bill Roberts directed "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence. In fact, Roberts was one of two directors of the "Rite of Spring" sequence (Paul Satterfield was the other). "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence was directed in 1938 by my father, James Nelson Algar, who spent 42 years with the Disney Studios as animator, director, writer and producer. "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" was originally intended to be released as a stand-alone short subject to showcase Mickey Mouse, whose popularity was suffering at the hand (and webbed feet)

A stunt coordinator aboard the helicopter that crashed, killing actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, during the filming of a "Twilight Zone" movie sequence testified last week that he personally warned director John Landis after an earlier filming sequence that the scene should be scaled down. "I said something to John that it was awful big and a lot of heat, and I explained that it should be cut down somewhat" Gary McLarty said. "He said that it would be."

Among the many stents, surgical clamps, pumps and other medical devices that have recently come before the Food and Drug Administration for clearance, none has excited the widespread hopes of physicians and researchers like a machine called the Illumina MiSeqDx. This compact DNA sequencer has the potential to change the way doctors care for patients by making personalized medicine a reality, experts say. "It's about time," said Michael Snyder, director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine.

DNA and proteins are arguably the most important components of the cells of living creatures. Both are produced by stringing together long chains of individual molecules - amino acids in the case of proteins and nucleotides in DNA. Understanding the identity of the individual molecules in these chains and the sequence in which they are strung together proved to be one of the major biological challenges of the last century. Only by unlocking these sequences would scientists be able not only to understand the fundamental workings of biochemistry, but also to duplicate it. In the early 1950s, British biochemist Frederick Sanger of Cambridge University developed the first viable technique for determining the amino acid sequence of proteins and used it to describe the structure of insulin, which is composed of 51 amino acids.

Deliberately paced but not so deliberately thought out, the horror entry "Cassadaga" tries to scoop up enough tropes to satisfy a wide range of potential fright fans but lacks the cohesion to ever truly be effective. Kelen Coleman sympathetically plays Lily, a deaf art teacher spurred by the tragic death of her younger sister to relocate to sleepy, moss-covered college town Cassadaga, where seance-holding spiritualists roam, a vengeful dead woman begins haunting her and the town weirdo might be a serial killer.

Diapers? Check. Infant car seat? Check. Comprehensive genome analysis? Roger that, too. For thousands of newborns born in and around Boston; San Francisco; Kansas City, Missouri; and North Carolina over the next several years, a full genomic sequencing may be among the medical tests conducted in the first days of baby's life. The procedure is anything but routine. But a $20-million bucket of grants announced this week by the National Institutes of Health will help decide whether such genomic analysis should be among the routine screenings conducted on all newborns.

At the center of "Passion," the new psychosexual thriller from master manipulator Brian De Palma, is a split-screen sequence featuring a classic work of modern choreography alongside a highly choreographed murder. Occupying one half of the screen is a performance of Jerome Robbins' ballet "Afternoon of a Faun," set to the music of Claude Debussy. The modern ballet, which was created in 1953, is a pas de deux set in a rehearsal room . The spare production, in which a man and a woman approach and repel each other, is a ballet about the ballet, in much the same way as De Palma's movies have always been about the movies.

Richard Artschwager, who died in February at 89, was that exceedingly rare artist who made paintings and sculptures of virtually equal merit. 'Richard Artschwager!' at the Hammer confirms that the artist's best work induces what artist Ed Ruscha has helpfully described as the "Huh? Wow!" sequence of response, rather than the dispiriting "Wow! Huh?" For art, there's nothing better than that. UCLA Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd. Through Sept. 1. Closed Monday. http://www.hammer.ucla.edu .

Apropos of some of the trickeries of the deceptive documentarian Michael Moore, it seems to me that the most unpleasant episode in this most cynical of recent films was a sequence about a woman who is trying to eke out a living by raising rabbits for sales to furriers or as pets or as food. The girl is made to look and sound stupid, naive and cruel as she kills and skins a rabbit. What is, however, fascinating about this sequence is that it parallels parts of the first great documentary ever made: Robert Flaherty's "Nanook of the North"--released in 1920.

The Times is to be commended for its well-taken points in its editorial (May 14) regarding the implications and importance of mapping the human genome. However, the big picture presented was marred by a few critical details. The corrections stand as follows. DNA is not a sequence of amino acids, but rather a sequence of nucleotides, each of which consists of (1) a ribose sugar, (2) a phosphate, and (3) a nitrogen-containing base, which may or may not be an amino acid. The importance of these corrections is that of clarifying the distinction between proteins, which are indeed sequences of amino acids, and nucleic acids (DNA is one)

The United Nations sent Nepalese peacekeeping troops to bring relief to Haiti after it was devastated by a 7.0 earthquake in 2010. A new study concludes the peacekeepers brought something else, as well -- cholera, triggering an epidemic that has sickened hundreds of thousands of Haitians and killed more than 8,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. After sequencing the DNA of 23 samples of the cholera-causing bacterium from Haiti and comparing them to the DNA of strains found elsewhere, researchers said the outbreak could be traced to Nepal , where the disease is endemic.

Researchers have unraveled the genetic code of a wild horse that loped across the frozen Yukon about 700,000 years ago, making it the oldest creature by far to reveal its DNA to modern science. Until recently, experts believed it was impossible to recover useful amounts of DNA from fossils that old. The previous record holder for oldest genome belonged to a polar bear that lived more than 110,000 years ago. The horse sequence, described Wednesday in the journal Nature, amounts to a dramatic increase in how far back scientists can peer into the biochemical history of advanced life.